Well, this was gruesome. Fortunately, I missed the entire game; by the time my plane landed, it was already into the third quarter. The problem of generating high expectations for a football team is that a two loss season (and the way the Ducks played today, I’m not confident about beating the Beavers) feels like a disaster.

The only redeeming point I can think of is that if the Ducks had beaten Stanford and then lost like this, I would be considerably more distraught.

13 SEC schools were in the Top 40 recruiting classes for 2013. Including Vandy. Including Kentucky.

The 14th? Missouri who’s moving past Oregon and Baylor this week in the rankings.

Alabama will likely be in the BCS championship game against FSU.

Since they will have to beat Auburn and Missouri to get there, they will be favored to win the 8th consecutive BCS championship and 9th in 11 years. If Auburn beats Bama and wins the SEC championship and Michigan State beats the Buckeyes (go Spartans!) the Auburn is likely paying FSU and could win it’s 2nd BCS title in 4 years.

Not seeing how the SEC is overrated, even though Florida clearly was.

If Arizona State beats Stanford in the PAC 12 championship game then a much better case can be made that the most overrated conference this year was the PAC 12.

I don’t see how one can judge the quality of a conference based upon who wins the conference and whether the teams beat up on each other. The quality of conference is much more accurately rated upon nonconference games, particularly against top opponents, and overall strength of schedule, which is of course based in no small part upon the same thing.

The idea that ASU winning the conference means the Pac-12 is overrated just makes no sense. First, are we to judge conferences based solely upon who wins them? Why not judge them on the worst team in each? It makes as much sense. Second, ASU is a pretty good team that has gotten better over the year. No shame if they won the conference.

The evidence that the SEC is clearly better than any other conference this year is not strong. The evidence being presented to the contrary is laughable. In addition to the small samples, the problem with basing an argument solely on BCS title games is that it only works if you think the BCS did an efficient job of selecting the two best teams in the country to play in the title game, which you’d have be a lunatic to believe.

In anticipation of this year’s matchup this weekend, Harvard student comedy group On Harvard Time traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to give fake tours of Yale’s campus to unsuspecting visitors. These prospective students may have been surprised to learn that Yale students are supposedly “stupider,” “less successful,” and “less attractive” than their peers at Harvard.

I did watch the game. If you are an Oregon supporter, it really was that bad. But I have to hand it to Arizona, they played really well. Arizona totally manhandled Oregon on both sides of the ball. I just can’t image a team losing to Washington State one week and then beating Oregon the next week, but that’s what happened.

I guess it’s “Go Arizona State” now.

On a related note, I really, really, really miss Jeff Tedford. I’ve lived through some really bad Cal seasons, but this season just feels like the absolute worst.

here’s hoping Stanford focuses on beating Notre Dame and Arizona State (again) because if Arizona State wins the PAC 12 title, that will be personally disappointing, but also disastrous for the conference.

Back in the summer, the NCAA piously announced it would no longer license video games, leaving it to members to decide whether they would continue to appear in EA Sports’ college football series. The schools’ biggest licensing agent and Electronic Arts chose to settle all claims brought by college players, leaving the NCAA as the only defendant. Naturally, the NCAA is now suing EA.

Whatever gamers think of EA Sports, vastly more people think vastly less of the NCAA, because of chickenshit legal ass-covering like this on one end and the high-handed enforcement of blitheringly stupid eligibility rules at the other, with the entire enterprise funded by contracts sold to televise ostensibly free performances. Now, after 15 years of being paid millions in pure profit just for putting its name and logo on a game—nothing more—the NCAA alleges that EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Company dealt them dirt in making that grubby grubby videogame whose wink-and-nod treatment of real-life players—in a game the NCAA endorses on its cover—now threatens the entire plantation.

Bear down! Best U of A win since . . . well, since they beat then- no. 2 Oregon in 2007. Ka’deem Carey deserves some Heisman votes. Those were the toughest 200 rushing yards you’ll ever see. The main reason Arizona won the game, besides the turnovers and penalties, was that he kept Oregon’s offense off the field.

I’d say this is a better win for UA than 2007. That year, they won because Dennis Dixon’s knee blew up. This year they won because they dominated all phases of the game. Quite impressive, I’m sad to say.

not really, UW lost to the top 4 teams in the conference, 3 of them on the road, the only game they really laid an egg in was at ASU. Every one of their wins has been convincing. They’re either the 5th or 6th team in the conference (between them and USC and they didn’t play each other) Losing on the road to the teams above you and convincingly beating the teams below you is hardly random, just happened that they played the 3 top teams in a row.

Kind of like how OSU was overrated because they happened to play 6 beatable teams in a row then played 4 teams that are better than them.

I’m a UW fan, so I think we are proving each other’s points. UW spank UA who spanks UO, who spanked UW who barely lost to Stanford, who lost to Utah, and UW also got spanked by UCLA and ASU, so we are all very good at time or very bad at times. Oregon has been for many years the top team, but even it loses at least once a year. It could be parity, but it also could be there isn’t a really disciplined team in the Pac 12 right now. I think the leauge is quite decent overall, but it sure as heck ain’t easy to pick a sure winner any week, and it is nigh impossible to determine what team will show up each week.

Ok, the fact that they clearly are winning the recruiting wars even at the 13th program level, doesn’t mean much.

ok, the fact that over an extended period of time many other conferences have had the chance to beat them for the BCS title and haven’t isn’t indicative of trend that the conference competition yields a stronger representative.

And granted, that 5/14 of their members have won a national championship in the past 15 years or so is not a real measure of sustained depth of the conference.

It’s clear that Colorado, Purdue, Connecticut, Kansas, Virginia, et al prove the bottom rung of every other BCS conference could mop the field with Kentucky and Arkansas invalidating any other claim the SEC has to any superiority whatsoever.

The difference between the SEC and other conferences is the number of teams that are nationally competitive on a regular basis. Other conferences generally have three or four, while the SEC has six or eight (giving A&M and Mizzou the benefit of the doubt). That’s it, really. The bottom-feeders in the SEC are bad, but there aren’t as many of them as in, say the Big 10. That said, any of the top SEC teams can (and do) lose to top teams from other conferences in any given game.

I’m not sure it’s really meaningful to argue about which conferences are “better,” since conferences don’t play games, teams do. For some reason, some SEC fans use this to boost their self-esteem.

I’m starting to wonder if travel time & weather might explain why PAC teams rarely go undefeated. They MUST travel more than other conferences (although the new Frankenstein conferences may change that). The worst thing about road games isn’t revved up fans of your opponent, it’s sitting on the bus/plane for most of a day. And anyone who’s been to Husky Stadium in a freezing rain or Pullman in a snowstorm knows pure misery (even when those teams were winning). I can’t imagine SEC weather being all that bad in Fall & Winter.

(and the way the Ducks played today, I’m not confident about beating the Beavers)

I don’t think you have much to worry about. My 5 seconds on the jumbotron was better than the Beavs’ first three quarters. Granted, they can’t possibly play that poorly again, but it’s always tough to win at Autzen.